The Not So Quiet Campus: Rumblings from the Ivory Tower

"The University is running a big business here," remarked Student Government Council Vice-president David Mitchell. "The administrators are businessmen, bureaucrats. They're selling a product. They see us as numbers on a piece of paper."

Like other colleges and universities in this country, the University of Michigan is a study in contradictions and inconsistencies. lts degrees provide a ticket to economic success, but although it espouses the principle of equal opportunity for all, the U of M's restrictive admission policies perpetuate the racial and class barriers that divide our nation.

As the training ground for the future leadership of our society and its democratic institutions, the University itself is governed in an autocratic manner by a small corps of administrators, and there is little voice for students and staff in its decision-making processes.

As an institution dedicated to the furtherance of knowledge in the public interest, the U of M instead houses studies on how to better market useless new consumer products, or (worse still) research to develop more efficient methods of maiming and killing contracted by the Pentagon.

Although the University often serves to perpetuate the status quo and unjust power relationships in our society, it has also tended to be a focus for challenges to those injustices.

Part of the rationale for public education (elementary, secondary, higher) is that it makes schooling available to everyone, as opposed to a relative elite who could afford private schools for their children. Public schools are supposed to function as an economic and social equalizer.

In this sense of public education, the University of Michigan is a failure. Since it is a state supported university, every tax-paying resident of the state contributes to the education of those attending the U of M. Data on income levels for the families of students at the University shows that the wealthiest segments of the state population are represented far out of proportion among U-M students.

One example is that 17% of students came from families earning over $25,000 a year in 1967, at a time when only 3% of all families nationally had incomes in that range. By 1971, the over $25,000 group made up almost 26% of the U-M student body. Essentially what this means is that working class and lower middle class taxpayers have been subsidizing the college educations of the children of upper middle class and wealthy families. Kind of like Robin Hood, but in reverse.

The racial barriers are as prominent as the class bars on entrance to the Big U. In 1970, only 3.8% of U-M students were black, although blacks made up 11% of the state's population.

That year, black students, organized as the Black Action Movement (BAM), lead a highly successful student strike demanding that the University commit itself to attaining 10% black enrollment by fall 1973. At that time, President Robben Fleming agreed to the demand. Under pressure to meet its agreement, the U of M did increase its black enrollment to 7% by September, 1974. That 7% indicated a 50% underrepresentation of minority group members as students at the U of M.

A sit-in by minority students last spring seeking (among other things) the University 's reaffirmation of its commitment to the BAM demands ended inconclusively.

The barriers to lower income and minority students seeking to attend The University are two fold--first, a middle class bias in tests (SAT, Achievement) required for admission, and second, inadequate financial aid provisions.

President Fleming has frequently stated that no student is denied an education because of financial need. The facts indicate otherwise.

All award statements from the Financial Aid Office have a line item called "unmet need," which is the amount remaining after the financial aid and all other resources are added up and subtracted from the student's budget. When this amount is large, it can easily prevent someone from going to school. In fact, the Financial Aid office makes this clear by the note that it often includes with the award stating that the student may want to consider withdrawing if he/she cannot raise the additional funds.

Of course, the annual tuition hike is always implemented after financial need has been assessed, so that the extra 6-24% in tuition is not considered in the calculation.

WAR & CORPORATE SERVICE

As a result of continually building antiwar militancy among faculty and students during the late sixties and early seventies, the University was forced to formally divest itself of its principle war research facilities at Willow Run Airport. The Willow Run Labs are probably best remembered for their development of the lasar guidance system for the so-called "smart bombs" used with deadly accuracy in the brutal Christmas, 1972 bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.

The University and Willow Run (now under the misnomer Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, or ERIM) continue to collaborate with one another, however, with a number of graduate students working on military contracts at the labs. To a reduced extent, the University itself continues in the war research field.

Proprietary research-that is, research carried out for private corporations for their exclusive use-is actively carried out at the U of M. An example of such a project would be a social scientist investigating patterns of appliance ownership on behalf of a company like General Electric. The serious question raised by all this is, how does refining the instruments of destruction or improving the marketing abilities of private businesses serve the public interest, and are these appropriate activities at a state university?

17% of U-M students came from families earning over $25,000 a year at a time when only 3% of all families nationally had incomes in that range. Blacks are under-represented by 50%.

NEW HOPE FOR SGC?

Because the elected Regents serve on a part-time non-paid basis, virtually all University decision-making power is in the hands of President Fleming and his associates. The faculty plays some role in setting academic policy, but other members of the university community are effectively locked out of any policy making role.

"I think students should have representation on every committee that affects them," stated Student Government Council (SGC) vice-president David Mitchell. Mitchell, along with President Debbie Goodman and six of fifteen at-large members of SGC elected last spring, is a member of the Student Organizing Committee (SOC). Originally formed as an undergraduate support group for the Graduate Employees Organization's strike last winter, SOC is now trying to revitalize the Student Government, which had fallen on hard times due to the infighting, factionalism and ineffectuality that characterized it for the last few years.

One of the first projects taken up by the the group after its election was the organizing of a coalition to fight the 6% tuition increase announced for this fall. Possible actions could include a one day class boycott and teach-in on the day that the U-M Regents are in town tor their monthly meeting, workshops and demonstrations around the issue. The Committee to Fight the Tuition Hike, as it calls itself, will hold an open mass meeting on September 8 (at a place to be announced) to map out strategy.

GRADUATE EMPLOYEES SLAM INACTION ON BIAS

The GradUate Employees Organization, which won its first contract as bargaining agent for two thousand graduate employees following a prolonged strike last winter, charged in August that the University was failing to live up to its contract in the area of affirmative action. Specifically, GEO blasted the U-M Administration for attempting to include foreign students in its tabulation of minority students employed as graduate assistants.

GEO publically released data compiled by the administration showing that, in addition to the underrepresentation of minorities and women among graduate students at the U of M, women and minority students received proportionally fewer teaching and research jobs in 34 out of 35 LS and A departments. The Union has also filed a grievance attempting to force the University to initiate recruitment efforts for minorities and women into the grad school.

CLERICALS' UAW LOCAL SIGNS CONTRACT WITH 'U' .

The most recent (but certainly not the last) group of U-M employees to gain recognition-clerical workers forming UAW local 2001-signed its first (one year) contract with the University last month. A relatively novel aspect of both the clericals' and the graduate employees' contracts was the banning of discrimination on the basis of sexual preference (heterosexual or homosexual).

Meanwhile, unionization efforts are underway for professional and administrative employees as well as technical workers at the 'U'. Part of the drive for unionization among University workers sterns from tight funds faced by U-M over the last few years which have resulted in small pay increases that haven't met inflationary demands. But it also results from the growing realization that U-M has become an increasingly impersonal institution run along corporate lines, and that it has to be dealt with in an organized, united fashion.

PROGNOSIS FOR 1975-76: LOCOMOTION OR LETHARGY?

Although nothing like the late sixties and early seventies, the campus has been far from quiet in the last year. Political issues have been raised among students and employees at the 'U' and gathered significant support.

There seems to be a strong chance that the issues of skyrocketing tuition, coupled with program and service cut-backs, will stir up enough resentment to get U-M students out of the cynical withdrawal that has been all-too prevalent in recent years. Only the next eight months will tell. The issues are there, but the energy remains to be demonstrated.